In fact, the big media mostly ignored the story - in marked
contrast to today's wall-to-wall coverage of news that President
Bush received a pre-Sept. 11 CIA briefing on a possible bin Laden
hijack plot.

And while the warning transmitted to Bush gave no inkling that
bin Laden planned to transform U.S. airliners into flying bombs and
slam them into American office buildings, Clinton administration
intelligence officials were in fact in possession of detailed
information on an al Qaeda conspiracy to hijack several U.S.
airliners - including a plan to crash one of the planes into the
Pentagon or CIA.

It was called "Operation Bojinka," a 1995 plot hatched by an al
Qaeda cell in the Philippines with an eye toward blowing up 12
American airliners. Some would be booby-trapped with bombs, like Pan
Am 103, others hijacked like the four U.S. jets commandeered on 9-11
and crashed into buildings.

Though the mainstream press never demonstrated much enthusiasm
for the story, Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine detailed what the
Clinton administration knew - and when it knew it - for NewsMax.com
last October.

Citing a Sept. 13 Agence France-Presse report, Irvine noted that
Philippine Police Chief Superintendent Avelino Razon had uncovered
the plot to "plant bombs in U.S. airliners and hijack others to
crash them into buildings like the CIA headquarters."

"Razon said [the plot] was found on the computer of Ramzi Yousef,
the organizer of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center," Irvine
reported. "He had fled to Pakistan, but his laptop was found in the
apartment he shared with his accomplice, Abdul Hakim Murad. Razon
said both were agents of Osama bin Laden."

A later Agence France-Press report noted:

"Among targets mentioned [in Yousef's computer files] was the
World Trade Center in New York ... CIA offices in Virginia and the
Sears Tower in Chicago."

Picking up where Irvine left off, the Washington Post quoted a
Filipino investigator who said that as he watched the attack on the
World Trade Center on television, he exclaimed in horror, "It's
Bojinka. We told the Americans everything about Bojinka. Why didn't
they pay attention?"

Razon told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that after the the
Philippine intelligence report was compiled in 1995, it was passed
on to the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Joint Task Force on Terrorism.

But, he complained, "It was not given credibility. Otherwise, it
could have prevented the destruction of the World Trade Center."

The Clinton FBI was in full possession of all the frightening
facts on Bojinka, but did nothing. Instead, as Reed Irvine revealed,
the bureau assured Congress that everything was under control.

"In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee
on terrorism in February 1998, 'Bojinka' - which means 'big bang' -
was described by Dale L. Watson, chief of the International
Terrorism Operations Section of the FBI, only as a plot to blow up
'numerous U.S. air carriers.'

"He said that the FBI had identified 'a significant and growing
organizational presence' of foreign terrorists in the United States.
He swore the bureau had them under control."

The Clinton FBI counterintelligence chief told the Senate that as
a result of the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the
Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, the FBI had
developed an 'enhanced capability' to track terrorist activities.

Is it likely that U.S. intelligence possessed this much
information on al-Qaeda plans to slam planes into U.S. buildings -
and didn't tell President Clinton?

Actually it is, if you believe the account of his former CIA
Director James Woolsey, who said Clinton never bothered to meet with
him during his stint as the nation's intelligence chief.

What about other administration officials, like Attorney General
Janet Reno, who certainly should have known about Bojinka?

There Clinton may also have an alibi.

During all of 1998 - the same year FBI counterintelligence
briefed Congress on the al-Qaeda hijack plot - Clinton met with his
Cabinet exactly twice: once in January to lie to them about his
relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and again in August to come clean
about the affair.